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CUDDUS 

BAM 

V 



“The Gexiter- Stone" 
“‘Jhe'Peace of "the Sofomon Va£feg" 
“The/Price* of the i T > rcurtC'”6te. 


Hluffrdlud by J.Aflon?t.Jc>llfl 



CHICAGO 

^LSbKIsSiyiDIS® © ©§>« 

1Q1T 



Copyright, 1907 
By Crane & Company 


Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 
1917 


Published September 8, 1917 



SEP 10 1917 


©Cl. A 4 73 3 93 

W. f. HAUL PRINTING COMPANY, CHICAGO 

'Vw 1 . 


(Ho William Mill Wtfflarter, 

Who invented the name of 


“CUDDY” 










There are about two billions of people 
holding down the earth's crust under the 
special dispensation of gravitation, but 
you and I, my dear reader, will never 
know more than a tiny group of them 
until they cease to be people and become 
folks to us. Then they enter into our 
day's work and are forevermore a part 
of its machinery. 

Cuddy and her baby were only folks, 
and I am telling you their story because, 
in the length and breadth of things, I 
believe they may have been among 
those to whom the Master spoke when 
He said : “Ye are the salt of the earth ” 











I 

Cfre ©ante 

/ 






(Euhhga Sabg 

i 

THE GAME 

There’s a breathless hush in the Close tonight — 

Ten to make, and the match to win — 

A bumping pitch, and a blinding light, 

An hour to play and the last man in. 

And it’s not for the sake of a ribboned coat, 

Or the selfish hope of a season’s fame, 

But his Captain’s hand on his shoulder smote — 
“Play up ! play up ! and play the game !” 

— Henry Newbolt. 

“TJOCK Chalk! Jay Hawk! K. 

XV U-o-o-o!” The long vibrant 
volume of voices rolled out over the 
prairie, dying away in a diffusion of 
atoms of sound with atoms of silence. 
“Rock Chalk ! Jay Hawk! K. U-o-o-o!” 
Again and again it rose increasingly 
with the swelling waves of air and 
pulsed out softly into that weird cadence 
that carries “the lost chord” in its ebbing 
tones. The November day was clear 
and still. The winds of heaven moved 
gently, and the landscape lay under 
the benediction of quietness. It was 
one of the last days of a gorgeous In- 
dian summer in Kansas which makes 
up for the lack of the beautiful 
foliage tints of the Eastern States in 

m 


2 


CtiODg’tf 15a6g 


the resplendent richness of its skies, 
and the soft indeterminate hues of its 
broad reach of distances. The late 
afternoon sun was slipping down the 
west into a sea of glass mingled with 
fire. 

Out beyond the little city, under the 
shadow of the hill-slope, was an ath- 
letic field where on this November 
afternoon the grand-stand was packed, 
and the open spaces were lined with an 
expectant crowd watching a great 
football struggle. The day before, a 
high wind had carried down a long 
section of fence-screen built above the 
tight ground fence to shut off the 
view of the park from the hill- 
slope up which the roadway ran. A 
jam of buggies, carriages, and farm 
wagons (there were no automobiles 
then) filled the road, leaving no space 
for those who would pass on their 
way. Caught in the jam was an old 
one-horse wagon, whose driver, a plain 
farmer, would have hurried on. He 
had a good-natured, patient face where 
the lines that disappointment and failure 
had graven had not barred out de- 
termination and hope. Finding no 
way out of the crowd, whose interest 
made them forget everything else, the 
man in the wagon turned to his wife 
sitting beside him. 

“We may just as well wait, Mother,” 
he said cheerily. “This is one of 


CuDOp’s TSaftp 


3 


them football games the University’s 
goin’ wild about. Looks like prize- 
fightin’ to me. If that’s eddication I 
don’t want none. Them colleges has 
both come here to play today on account 
of all gettin’ to go to the opery tonight 
an’ hearin’ that great singer, I’ll never 
tell you her name.” 

“It’s not eddication, Joe Perine,” re- 
plied his wife. “It’s anything but that, 
it seems to me. I don’t like to see it, 
and yit it’s fascinatin’, too.” 

“Neither do I, an’ I want to be gettin’ 
home, but we’ll have to wait.” 

He settled himself, patiently indif- 
ferent to the game, and began to study 
the people in the variety of vehicles 
about him. Mrs. Perine did the same — 
just a poor farmer and his wife getting 
home from a trip to town. 

Hard work had made them both look 
older than they really were — the hard 
work the Kansas farmers knew who 
struggled to make homes for them- 
selves in the time when the raw begin- 
nings of the State, though past its days 
of ruffianism, required every man to be 
a hero. Seated between the two was 
little Harold Perine, a sturdy baby 
boy of four years. His cheeks were 
rosy, his fair hair curled softly about 
his head, his eyes were deeply blue 
like his mother’s. In fact, his whole 
face was hers recast in baby mold. 
With wide-open eyes he watched the 


4 


CuDDg’0 


game, seeing every little detail as only a 
child can see. It was so utterly strange 
to him, the crowded grand-stand, the 
side-lines black with spectators, and in 
the open the contending teams forging 
back and forth across the gridiron 
spaces. 

“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K. U- 
o-o !” again and again the shout went 
up with its tremendous surge of sound. 

“What for they say ’at?” asked the 
little one. 

“Oh, that’s to keep their courage up, 
I guess, Baby, and help them to win,” 
answered his mother, more to satisfy 
him than from any definite knowl- 
edge. 

“Is they p’ayin’ bat-man?” he 
questioned. 

“No, no, they are playin’ football, not 
black-man.” 

Baby Harold watched more intently 
than ever, noting how, every time the 
boys from the far side were driven 
back ever so little, the grand-stand 
broke into that fierce, fascinating call. 
His heart began to beat in sympathy 
with them. Unconsciously he shoved 
with all the strength of his tiny body 
against his mother, as if he would 
help to hold back this enemy to “Rock 
Chalk.” Closer and closer the Univer- 
sity’s opponents came, fighting foot by 
foot for the space. Again and again 
the supporters gave their cry of cheer 


Cu&Dp’s 15abp 


5 


and encouragement, till suddenly all 
was still. Nearer and nearer to the side 
of the field next to the high roadway 
the big fellows were driven, and the 
people held their breath. 

“Looks like K. U.*s goin’ under,” said 
a big man standing up in a hay-wagon, 
turning to the shorter ones below him. 

Baby Perine’s heart gave a great 
throb. He had caught the spirit of the 
game. He wondered why the crowd did 
not call now when there was such need 
for it. He listened breathless for their 
cry, and they would not give it. It was 
the supreme moment. The University 
eleven were braced for their last stand. 
There was a deathlike stillness. The 
very air was motionless. 

Suddenly a clear baby voice rang out 
so sweet and shrill that, from its height 
on the hill-slope, it reached even the 
breathless spectators far across the 
field. 

“Wot Chot! Jay Haut! Ta O-o!” 

The effect was magical. The crowd 
went wild. The grand-stand rocked 
and the fences swayed with the surging 
shouts of those pressing against them. 
Down the field went the K. U. men, 
fierce and furious. Defeat was turning 
to victory. The wagons on the roadway 
shifted, and Joe Perine, seeing an open- 
ing, hurried his horse through it, and in 
a minute or two he was out of the jam 
and on his way toward home. 


6 


CuDDp’0 'Ba&p 


"I ist wanted to help,” said Baby 
Harold, turning to his mother. 

“Well, I reckon you done it, Baby,” 
chuckled Joe. “You’ll have to go to 
the University when you grow up.” 

“What’s the vus’ty, Mamma?” asked 
Baby. 

“It’s a place where you yell 'Rock 
Chalk’ if you want to git through,” said 
his father, laughing. 

But Mrs. Perine’s face had a serious 
look. 

“I’ll tell you about it after-while, 
Baby,” she said. 

The wagon rattled along the smooth 
road on to the swell known as Basher’s 
Hill, from the top of which the whole 
countryside unrolled in the grandeur 
of a rose-tinged prairie twilight. As 
the November evening grew chill, Baby 
Harold nestled down between his father 
and mother, who drew the old quilt 
that served for a lap robe snugly about 
him. With childish joy he crowed and 
prattled, while from his little muffled-up 
space every now and then came the glad 
outburst : 

“Wot Chot! Jay Haut! Ta O-o!” 

Over the divide and down the long 
south slope went the Perines, coming 
at the dusk of evening to the poor little 
farm-house nestling under the shelter 
of tall cottonwoods and leaf-stripped 
elms. There were masses of white 
and gold chrysanthemums about the 


CtlODg’S 'Ba&g 


7 


kitchen door. The dead vines at the 
windows and over the crazy little front 
veranda, and the brown stalks and 
withered leaves in their rude beds gave 
ample-proof of 

The fair democracy of flowers 
That equals cot and palace, 

and that must have made a summer- 
time beauty about the otherwise barren 
and humble surroundings of a barren 
and comfortless home. 

Some years before Joe Perine and his 
wife had come with their two little boys 
to Kansas. They had little capital be- 
sides youth and health and ambition. 
They had little education in books, for 
both had come from hard-working fam- 
ilies, where opportunities were few. 
But they were intelligent, honest, cheer- 
ful, and God-fearing; and combining 
with these a patient industry, they were 
representatives of the class that first 
tilled the Kansas soil and by their own 
sacrifice sent out a generation of abler 
men and women to follow them. 

The quarter-section of land the Pe- 
rines had preempted had the inevitable 
mortgage nailed fast to it, and Joe had 
little money to pay for help, and little 
time for anything but the grind of labor. 
And while annual cultivation was help- 
ing the soil to surer crops, the growing 
bunch of cattle promised a little cut 
in the mortgage, and the hay in the 


8 


CuDDp’0 


upland ricks would pay a portion of the 
December taxes, it was all a slow, 
back-breaking business; and only Joe 
Perine’s spirit of determination kept 
him sometimes from utter defeat. 

“When we git the land clear we’ll 
fix up the house, Mother,” Joe would 
say encouragingly, and his wife would 
smile hopefully. 

Mrs. Perine had a face an artist 
could have made into a Madonna’s on 
canvas, had she only been reared in 
the bounds of luxury. Deep-blue eyes, 
wavy brown hair, and a fair clear skin; 
there was an innate refinement about 
her, a sweetness of expression, a quick 
intelligence. Some women there are 
who make any place look more inter- 
esting. Mrs. Perine was such a woman. 
There was a cleanliness about her, and 
a personality that made one somehow, 
feel her presence. But her manner was 
simple, and her dress was the plain 
home-sewed garment of the Kansas 
country-woman before the days of R. 
F. D’s and rural telephones and King- 
dragged roads, and low-priced good 
magazines. She had determination, 
too, like her husband, but an inborn love 
of beautiful things, which she could not 
have, made a void in her life of which he 
never dreamed. 

So, busy as she was, she trained her 
vines and filled her dooryard with flow- 
ers, and patiently replanted what the 


CuOOg’0 


9 


chickens scratched out, and worked and 
waited, looking forward to the time 
when a better house and better fences 
and bluegrass and blossoms, and a little 
leisure for books, of which she was 
fond, might make life more comfort- 
able. 

The winter after Harold was born 
had been a bitterly cold one in Kansas, 
and the Perine home was not thick- 
walled against it. The earlier builders 
in the West were deceived by the warm 
springs and hot summers and late mild 
autumns into the belief that the winters 
were never severe. So they built poorly, 
both for themselves and their stock. 

But there was more than cold that 
invaded the little dwelling under the 
cottonwoods that winter. Pneumonia 
came also. And one black day, when the 
sunshine lay like a mockery on the deso- 
late prairies, the kindly neighbors had 
gone with the poor father and mother 
to where in the new graveyard a wide 
short grave opened to receive two little 
forms, and only Baby Harold was left 
in the dreary Perine home. 

How his parents feared for him and 
clung to him ! But he grew chubby and 
sturdy, filling the house with sunshine as 
only a baby can. Nothing troubled him. 
No disease could fasten on him. He 
was the joy of their lives, the blessing 
of the days when heart-break slowly 
gave place to resignation. 


10 


CuDDp’s 15 at)g 


On this November evening after 
Baby had watched his first college 
game, he trotted to and fro after his 
mother as she prepared supper. 

“What’s a vus’ty, Mamma?” he 
asked again. 

“Oh, it’s something nice,” replied his 
mother, busy with her duties. 

“I wish I had a vus’ty. Tould I eat 
it, or play wiz it? Is it pwetty? What 
is a vus’ty? Wot Chot, Jay Haut, Ta 
O-o,’ ” so he prattled on. “Tell me about 
the vus’ty. I do want to know.” 

But the many evening chores were 
crowding her, so Baby left her for a 
little while. At supper in his high chair, 
as soon as his father had asked the 
blessing, he broke out in his high clear 
baby voice, with the new words he had 
learned. 

“Baby will be a singer, some day, 
like you, Joe,” said Mrs. Perine, noting 
the sweetness and volume of voice with 
which her darling repeated the call 
first heard that day by the side of the 
football field. 

Joe Perine was a born singer. His 
clear tenor voice had been the greatest 
help the little schoolhouse church at 
Deer Creek had known. He had never 
had any training outside of the rural 
singing-schools of his boyhood. But 
there was a rich fullness in his tones not 
often heard in the tenor voice. His baby 
was already learning to sing — and his 



12 




voice had that sweet magnetic tone that 
makes one listen. 

It was late that night before the 
chores were all done, and the little 
family sat for a brief time about the 
kitchen stove. Baby was close in his 
mother’s arms, his chubby hands now 
and then stroking her cheeks. 

“What’s a vus’ty, Cuddy-Mamma?” 
he asked softly. 

That was the baby name by which he 
loved to call her when he was cuddled in 
her arms at night. 

“Baby wouldn’t understand,” she 
said. “The University is for boys when 
they are big. It makes ’em know lots of 
things.” 

“How to p’ay bat-man way down by 
the bid fence ?” he queried. 

“Yes, and learn books.” 

“Pwetty pitcher books ?” 

“Some of them, maybe,” said his 
mother. 

“May I have a vus’ty when I det a 
bid man, an’ p’ay bat-man wiz bid mens, 
an’ have books, an’ say ‘Wot Chot, Jay 
Haut, Ta O-o’?” 

His mother looked at him thought- 
fully. 

“I’m afraid not, Baby. The Univer- 
sity is for folks that have money.” The 
weight of poverty was on her soul as 
she spoke. “I wish you could go, but 
I don’t know.” 

“Oh, no,” broke in his father, “you’ll 


Cfl DOg’0 OBabp 


13 


be Papa’s big boy an’ plow an’ herd the 
cattle an’ cut the hay. You can drive 
two horses then. You don’t want no 
University.” 

“Yes, I do,” said Baby with quivering 
lip. “I do want a vus’ty, Papa. Why 
tan’t I have a vus’ty, Cuddy-Mamma? 
An’ when sompin’ doin’ to det me I’ll ist 
yell ‘Wot Chot! Wot Chot!’ an’ wun 
fast away. An when I’m ’fwaid in the 
bid old dark I’ll ist say ‘Ta O-o!’ an’ 
you’ll hear me an’ help me. I want a 
vus’ty, Cuddy.” 

“Poor little feller,” said Joe. “Don’t 
cry. You will be Papa’s nice big boy, 
an’ maybe — who knows?” He looked 
at his wife. “Our boy might some day 
be a scholar.” 

A look of love shone in the mother’s 
eyes. A shadowy hope for impos- 
sible things. The long mortgage debt, 
the taxes and interest, the stretching 
of every penny that did not allow even 
the necessities of life, how could school- 
ing that cost money ever be their baby’s 
portion? But the mother-love was too 
strong to disappoint her child. 

“We’ll see, Baby, we’ll see when you 
are bigger.” 

They were too honest to promise 
even so vague a thing as this, merely 
to quiet the little one’s whim. 

It was still early for city folks to 
retire when Joe Perine opened the 
Bible and read a Psalm. Baby was 


14 


• Cutmp’$ "Batip 

nodding before the reading was finished. 
He stumbled through his “Now I lay 
me,” and cuddled down in his poor little 
crib by his mother’s bed. Opening his 
sleepy eyes a moment, he smiled up at 
her and put up his rosy lips for her 
good night kiss. 

“Wot Chot, Jay Haut, Ta O-o,” he 
murmured sleepily. 

A little later the light went out in 
the Perine home, but somehow the 
mother could not sleep. Tired as she 
was with her long ride in the autumn 
air, and the excitement a trip to town 
brings to the humble country folk, her 
mind would not lose its grip on con- 
sciousness. The game, with its strange 
new appointments to her, kept picturing 
itself out again and again, and mingled 
with it was the thought of Baby. She 
reached out to his crib and felt his 
warm cheek and moist curls. He was 
so dear to her. 

At length she fell asleep, and dreamed 
and dreamed. And always it was the 
same thing- — the game, the hoarse col- 
lege yell resounding in her ears, the 
struggle across the field, and mingled 
with it all was her own intense desire 
for her baby to go to school. And always 
the word came back: she must climb 
a high hill before her, first. That done, 
he could go to college. She tried to 
climb. She fell, but rose again, and 
stumbled on. Then she was at the game 




15 


again, and again she wished that her boy 
might go to college, and again the hill 
must be climbed. 

In the pink light of dawn she awoke. 
Baby Harold had crept into bed beside 
her, and was softly kissing her cheek. 

“Let me cuddle in wiz you. You is 
my own Cuddy. I’m doin’ to have a 
vus’ty some day, ain’t I, Mamma?” he 
said cooingly, and nestling in her arms 
he fell asleep. 








II 

Cfre eiouOslBurst 









II 


THE CLOUD-BURST 

Nobody knew how the fisherman brown, 

With a look of despair that was half a frown, 
Faced his fate on that fearful night, 

Faced the mad billows with hunger white, 

Just within hail of a beacon-light 
That shone on a woman fair and trim, 

Waiting for him. 

— Lucy Larcom. 

T HE May landscape was one deluge 
of green. For two weeks it had 
rained every day. Now and then a few 
hours of sunshine with a heavy steamy 
air had made life a burden to everything 
except the growing crops and faster 
growing weeds. Now and then the 
“clearing-up shower” of the rainy spell 
seemed to have fallen, and a red sunset 
gleamed feverishly in the west, only to 
be followed by an all-night rain. But 
for three days there had been no sunset. 
The sodden earth was chill; the creeks 
were running bank-full, and many a 
Kansas draw almost perennially dry 
was now a flooded stream, swift and 
fatally deceptive. 

Joe Perine looked anxiously out from 
the doorway of the farm-house. Above 
the steady beat of the downpour he 
could hear a hoarse roar, the voice of 

[ 19] 


20 Cun flp’S 15a 6p 

the storm which no human voice may 
defy. 

“It must be an awful rain to the west. 
Sounds like a cyclone or cloud-burst. 
They’re girtin' it over in Grover town- 
ship. An’ what they git there they’ll be 
sendin’ here in a few hours. All the 
water off them little hills fills these 
draws in no time. Just listen, Mother !” 

Mrs. Perine shook the flour from her 
hands, and, pushing aside her dough- 
pan, came and stood by her husband. 
A vague sense of insecurity possessed 
her, a dread of impending calamity 
hung over her. She was not a coward. 
The hard life of the home-builder in the 
West had given her a courage and a 
fearlessness in meeting danger. But 
this evening she looked imploringly at 
her husband as she caught the growl of 
that dreadful storm beating upon the 
helpless earth. 

Joe smiled down at her and put one 
arm around her. All the love of a manly 
heart, all the hope and fearlessness of a 
courageous soul shone in his face, and 
drove her own fear away. She never 
forgot that moment. Long afterward it 
came to her in memory like a very bene- 
diction. Through lonely years, in days 
of deepest trials, it gave her, as at this 
moment, a new strength to meet what- 
ever might come. 

On the step at their feet sat Baby, 
staring out at the mad swirl of water 


CtiOdp’0 TBa&p 


21 


where there never before had been any- 
thing but the draw between the pasture 
and the barnyard. 

Baby was now nearly five, and while 
he was beginning to be a sturdy little 
boy, he was not quick to drop his baby 
speech, and he clung to his mother with 
an effusive love even for a child. “My 
Cuddy-Mamma,” he had come to call 
her altogether now, keeping the pet 
name he had created, as little children 
will. And often it was just “Cuddy” 
alone that stood for all that “mother” 
can mean. 

Since the day when he had seen 
with wondering eyes the student con- 
test on the field by the roadside, he 
had many times come back to it fin his 
childish prattle. Over and over in his 
mind he had turned this strange thing, 
so unlike any other impression there. 
Finally it became settled that the 
“vus’ty” was the best thing anybody 
could have. He had his own child- 
notion of what it meant, but there was 
the element of power in it. With it he 
could do anything, and its watchword 
was the college yell that in later years 
was to be heard all around the world. 

For days together he would forget 
it, then suddenly he would break out 
with the jubilant cry. Especially had 
he come to answer his mother’s call by 
it. So he had made known to her his 
hiding-places in the hay, and his little 


22 


CuOfip’s "Bafip 


play-nooks about the rose-bushes. And 
when he was lost or afraid, his clear 
cry, half a defiance of fear and half 
a pleading for help, had come to be this 
University call. All children have such 
leadings along strange and unusual 
lines. Every mother knows how near 
the world of imagination and of quaint 
self-shaped ideas lies to the real world 
of the child. Every household has its 
set of phrases that the baby has created 
in some odd manner, phrases that need 
an interpreter to the stranger’s ear. 

And thus, far away from the great 
school, the noisy students’ rallying, ring- 
ing slogan had become the watchword 
for protection, and power and loving as- 
surance, for a tiny child in the poor little 
home of an ignorant farmer. 

The rain that had poured in a torrent 
now ceased. The roar in the west had 
died down, but the sky was still one 
black shadow and there was a feeling 
in the air that the worst was yet to come. 

“I must git the fences down and let 
the cattle into the upland before the 
creek gits any higher.. The draw’s 
risin’ every minute/’ said Joe. 

“Oh, Joe, I’m afraid for you to go.” 
Mrs. Perine’s face was white. 

“Will you turn back,, Papa?” asked 
Baby gravely. 

“Well, I reckon I will,” replied Joe 
gaily. “You take care of Cuddy- 
Mamma till I come. Deer Creek will 


CuDflp'0 IBa&g 


23 


reach clear over to the draw beforp 
mornin’, an’ if the cattle ain’t let out 
there won’t be no interest-money paid 
this year. We must save ’em/’ 

They watched him go down the 
sodden way bordered with wet rose- 
bushes and overhung with the rain- 
burdened branches of trees, his rubber 
boots splashing up drops at every step. 
Across the lot and into the draw he 
went, thinking, as they did, that the 
water would hardly cover his boot-tops. 
It reached nearly to his shoulders. They 
saw him tearing down the strong wire 
fence that separated the creek pasture 
from the upland. It was hard work, for 
the fence had been built to stay. The 
gates on the lower side of the field had 
been under water for two days. 

Meanwhile there came a dull growl 
out of the west, an increasing, deepen- 
ing roar — the sound of many waters. 
A darkness was dropping down on the 
land. Baby had slipped unnoticed into 
the house. The minutes seemed hours 
to the little woman by the kitchen door. 
A sense of utter loneliness seized her. 
She ran to the edge of the draw, strain- 
ing her eyes to watch the moving figure 
across the meadow. The roar increased. 
A great surging stream came rushing 
from the west. It caught the cattle and 
their driver just as they tried to enter 
the draw, and swept them under in its 
wrath. A merciful darkness shut it all 


24 


CuDDp’s 15a6p 


from the watcher on the hither side as 
the Death Angel passed down the way 
of the waters. 

“Here, Mis’ Perine, we’ll take care 
of everything. You go back to the 
house to your baby. Little feller needs 
you now.” 

It was the kindly voice of Jake Basher, 
a big good-hearted neighbor, who spoke. 
Two or three other men were with him, 
rough Western farmers, but tender as 
ministering angels toward the dazed 
little woman suddenly stricken with a 
world-old grief. 

“We’ll be back pretty soon. You’ve 
got to be brave now, Lord help you. 
You’ve got your baby to think of. He’ll 
be your blessin’, too.” 

They hurried away, leaving behind 
them some sense of human aid. 

It is a precious thing for us that 
(underneath are always the Everlasting 
Arms, that when the earth goes out 
from under our feet in its place God 
comes. Mrs. Perine knew what had 
happened, and she turned toward the 
house. 

The rain was over, and the May 
moon was lighting up the flood-smjtten 
land with its splendor. Up the sod- 
den way to the kitchen door, the 
over-hanging branches silvery with 
raindrops, .and the fragrant roses 
strewing the path with perfumed petals. 


CuODp’0 Ogafig 


25 


she walked through her Gethsemane 
with the moonbeams falling like an 
aureole of glory about her. The kitchen 
was very dark, save for the square of 
light on the floor that fell through the 
open window. Baby was nowhere in 
sight, and the mother’s heart was 
smitten with a new chill. What if he 
had followed her to the edge of that 
mad water and had fallen in when the 
terror of it all had driven her senses 
from her. She called to him. No 
answer came. She hastily lighted a 
lamp, calling again and again. Pres- 
ently from the dark bedroom came a 
muffled voice, “Wock Chalk! Cuddy, 
Wock Chalk!” It was the little one’s 
accustomed answer to her call, . and 
climbing out from the bedclothes he ran 
to her with outstretched arms. 

“I was so ’fraid,” he said, clinging to 
her, “but I ain’t now. I’ll take care of 
you till Papa comes back.” 

Poor Mrs. Perine held him close to 
her heart. 

“You are all I have now, Baby,” she 
said. 

His arms tightened about her neck. 

“Let me cuddle up to you wite close. 
You is my Cuddy, an’ I’ll always love 
you. I’ll not call you Mamma no more. 
You is ist my Cuddy.” 

To the grief-oppressed there is no 
love like the love of a little child, and 


26 


CuDDg’0 TSabp 


no blessing like the blessing of toil. In 
the farm-house under the cottonwoods 
a new order of things had arisen. The 
work of the season, belated by the May 
floods, must go on. The loss of the 
cattle must be met. The mortgage in- 
terest did not quit growing, no more 
did the weeds. Ready money was only 
a dream. Hired help was hard to secure 
for a poor widow who could only promise 
to pay. Everybody needed help, for 
the rain had fallen on all alike. So it 
was hard times for Cuddy Perine and 
her child. The isolated farm-houses put 
miles of prairie between families, and 
hard work was combined with loneli- 
ness. It is only the truly heroic who 
can go through such tests and come out 
refined gold. 

There was one blessing in all these 
things, however. There was no time 
for sitting idle, wrapped in a consuming 
grief. The sunshine that might have 
seemed a mockery to the mourner in a 
life of ease, meant ripening grain to the 
poor widow. The late summer rains 
that would bring back the memory of 
that awful May storm promised late 
pasture and better forage. And on these 
things depended Mrs. Perine’s own ex- 
istence and that of her beloved boy. 

“Of course the Widder Perine ’ll lose 
that hundred an’ sixty. It’s too bad Joe 
couldn’t ’a’ lived. I b’lieve he’d ’a’ 
pulled through eventual. But she’d 


CuDDg’0 15a6p 


27 


better let the First National foreclose. 
She ought to move to town. She could 
do washin' an’ keep herself some way.” 

So the good-intentioned neighbors 
declared. They would have helped her 
if they could, but they also had troubles 
to be met. It was this very good-will 
that had led them to gather at Jake 
Basher's house one bright Sunday after- 
noon in October to talk over what was 
best for their brave little neighbor 
making her struggle alone and single- 
handed. The consensus of opinion was 
that just expressed. 

“It's too bad,” they affirmed. “She's a 
plucky one, and willin' to work, but 
everything's agin her. An' the kindest 
thing the Deer Creek neighborhood can 
do fer her is to send a committee with 
Jake Basher fer spokesman an' tell 
her so. She’ll never git through the 
winter.” 

So it was agreed that Jake Basher 
and two of his neighbors should go at 
once on this kindly errand. They found 
Cuddy and Baby Harold sitting on the 
doorstep. Cuddy's eyes were not on 
the grass-carpeted draw, where the 
tragedy of her life had been written, 
but up on the west ridge, where a dip 
in the hill pasture was revealing the last 
grandeur of an autumn sunset, tint on 
tint, like unto the foundation-stones in 
the walls of the New Jerusalem. 

Gently as he could, for he was no 


28 


Cut) Dp’s 15a6p 


happy after-dinner speaker, Basher de- 
livered their message. 

‘They ain’t no other way fur ye 
to do, Mis’ Perine. The other two 
reinforced their spokesman. 

Cuddy’s heart was like lead. She 
knew more than any of them what lay 
before her. 

“I can’t do it,” she said. “If I go 
to town an’ wash for a livin’, there’ll 
be nothin’ but livin’ to show for it. If 
I stay here there’s something maybe 
besides just life. There’s the farm — ” 

“But you can’t keep it. You’ll lose 
it, an’ then where are ye?” So said 
one of the committee. “In a few years 
your boy kin hire out or git a job shov- 
elin’ dirt on the street. But you’d better 
have him bound out to some farmer. 
Farmers is always needin’ bound-boys.” 

Cuddy looked down at the curly head 
beside her. A bound-boy ! And herself 
a washerwoman. An honest worker, but 
little separated from the class who court 
pauperism. The face of her husband 
when he had given her that last caress, 
the bright brave face of Joe Perine, came 
to her at that moment. She lifted her 
eyes to the west where the sun, now gone 
from sight, was sending great shafts' 
of pink far across the sky, like the arms 
of God reaching above the, shadows of 
earth to lift her up. 

“I’m so much obliged to you, but I’m 
goin’ to stay an’ fight it out,” she said. 




29 


So the three left her. At the gate 
Jake Basher paused. 

“You go on, an’ I’ll overtake ye. I’ve 
got to git me a drink. I’m dry as 
August.” 

He came back to the two on the door- 
step. Baby’s arms were about his 
mother’s neck. He could not under- 
stand it all, but he knew vaguely, with 
a child’s infinite trust, that there must 
be a way out. 

“You shall stay here, Cuddy. I’m 
goin’ to have a vus’ty when I’m big. I 
ain’t goin’ to be a bound-boy. An’ when 
I get it I can do any fin g.” His voice 
swelled with the last sentence. 

“You jest bet you can, little boy.” 
There was a huskiness in Basher’s 
voice, although he had no notion of 
what the child had in mind. “Keep 
this to help you get it.” 

He handed the little one a bright new 
penny. 

“Now, Mis’ Perine, you jest hang on. 
You’re a gritty woman. Keep your 
nerve, an’ don’t give up. And whenever 
you git discouraged as you’re bound to 
do,” he pointed toward the dim outline 
of the divide far to the north, “you re- 
member they’s one family jest over 
Basher’s hill that ’ll stan’ by ye tel — 
tel the las’ dog’s hung.” 

Then Basher rejoined his companions, 
and Cuddy and Baby were left alone. 

“See, Cuddy,” said Baby, holding up 



CuDDg’g T3at)g 


3t 


the bright penny. “It’s to help get my 
vus’ty. Put it tight away.” 

Cuddy opened the old-fashioned clock 
and dropped the penny inside the case. 

"I* the beginnin* for you, Baby,” 
she said bravely. “It’s small as could 
be, but it ain’t no smaller than the little 
springs that begins the big rivers. ‘An’ 
the Lord, He it is that doth go before 
thee. He will not fail thee, nor forsake 
thee’,” she added gently, and her voice 
sounded like a prayer. 

Baby looked up with a childish rever- 
ence in his face. 










Ill 

IBa&p’s Christmas 


» 













Ill 


BABY’S CHRISTMAS 


You know 

How blessed ’tis to give. 

And they who think of others most 
Are the happiest folks that live. 

— Phcebe Cary. 



HAT was a bitter winter follow- 


A ing the year of the heavy May 
rains in Kansas. The snows began 
early. Stock suffered greatly, even 
before Thanksgiving, while the Decem- 
ber weather was more suggestive of a 
Michigan winter than the mild open 
Kansas month. The promise for a 
white Yuletide was sure. 

Christmas is ever the same. There 
is no other good cheer in all the twelve 
months like the holiday gladness. There 
is no other giving such a joy as when 
the closing year brings again the Holy 
Night with its childish traditions of 
Santa Claus and its sacred, centuries-old 
benediction, “On earth peace ; good-will 
toward men.” 

To the Kansas children Christmas 
was never more welcome, for to many 
it was their first snowy holidays, and 
they rejoiced in it with the mad joy 
of childhood. 


[ 35 ] 


36 


CuODg’s OSa&g 


Harold Perine’s few toys had been 
Santa Claus gifts. No lavish array, to 
be sure. But with a little candy, a few 
nuts and an orange and some precious 
plaything, five times had his tiny stock- 
ing been filled. This year there must 
be a change. It was no use to deceive 
him with anticipations that could not 
be realized, his mother thought. It is 
brutal to rudely destroy this happy story 
of childhood, and yet she knew no Santa 
Claus would cross the snow to the home 
by the cottonwoods this year. With all 
his jolly love for children, the dear old 
saint has always most favored the little 
ones of the rich. 

It was no small cross for Cuddy 
to find an excuse for this failure on 
his part. But she took it up as she 
was learning to lift all her crosses, 
one by one, bravely, even cheerfully. So 
one evening by the same old kitchen 
stove (they had only one fire, and fuel 
for that was growing scarce), she talked 
with her darling gravely about the case. 

“He can’t come every year, you know, 
and this may be his off year,” she said. 

“Why not ? ’Cause we got no Papa ?” 
queried Baby. “Will he be away in 
Papa’s land?” 

“No, dearie ; there’s better things than 
even Santa Claus where Papa is.” 

She had kept from him all the horror 
and grief of her tragedy. It had made 
her own sorrow lessen as she made 


CuDDg’0 T5a6g 


37 


beautiful to him the story of the Life 
Eternal into which his father had en- 
tered. 

“What shall we do, Cuddy, wiv no 
Santa, I wonder ?” he said thoughtfully. 
“Oh, I know, Cuddy, I know, I know.” 
He danced about in his joy. 

“Let’s have ist one stockin’, not yours 
nor mine, but Papa’s for bof of us. 
Papa would ist love that, I know. An’ 
I’ll be your Santa, an’ you be mine. It’s 
ist all play until the year when he comes. 
Will that be the fat year like you read 
in the Bible ’bout Joseph and the 
’Gyptians an bad old Pharaoh ?” 

“Yes, dearie, Santa will come again 
in the fat years. This is one of our 
lean ones. Lord help us!” she added 
under her breath. “An’ we’ll just play 
Santa Claus to each other. An’ Papa 
will be glad we took his stockin’, an’ 
although we can’t see him I am sure he 
will be near us on Christmas eve. But 
Baby, what shall I put in for you?” 

“Oh, pwetty things.” 

“I haven’t any. It’s our lean year, 
you know. I wish I had.” There were 
tears in her voice which Baby was quick 
to note. 

“Never mind, ‘Cuddy’ ” — and after 
a moment the cloud lifted for him. “Oh, 
Cuddy, you can’t put a vus’ty in for me 
can you ? Could you put a picture of a 
vus’ty, maybe? Pd ist like that so 
much,” 


38 


CuDDg’g ISaftg 


“You must wait and see. What will 
you get for me ?” she asked gaily. 

“You must wait an’ see/’ he replied 
quickly. 

So they chatted of their Christmas, 
this lonely couple, building their holiday 
together. There was hardly a human 
need that was not theirs. Hunger, cold, 
toil, loneliness, and mourning — all were 
their daily portion; while there was no 
beauty in their home except the beauty 
of cleanliness, and pitifully few were 
the comforts of their household. But 
there was one thing plentiful there, and 
that was Love. Whatever else might 
fail, however sharp might be the pinch 
of poverty and the hard demands of 
labor, this best thing in the world stood 
firm. Cuddy’s life was centered in her 
child. His mother was his idol. She 
kept a cheery heart for his sake, while 
he was already learning to do without 
things and to be self-reliant in his child- 
ish way, that he might not grieve his 
beloved. 

On the day before Christmas the 
widow was obliged to go to town. It 
was too cold to take Baby. The pneu- 
monia of past winters was not forgotten. 
It was a long afternoon trip, and to 
leave him alone seemed impossible. 

“What shall I do with you?” Cuddy 
asked. 

“I’ll be good. I’ll play an’ keep close 
to the fire.” 


CuDDp’0 TSabp 


39 


“But Fm afraid the fire will go out.” 

“Then I’ll go to bed an’ cuddle down 
to sleep.” 

“No, no; keep awake, whatever you 
do, so you can say 'Rock Chalk’ when I 
come home and call you.” 

Visions of fire and of cold came to 
her, but she trusted as she must do most 
of the days now. 

Early in the afternoon she started 
away on her long nine-miles drive to 
town. The north-wind swept drearily 
down the dull sky as she passed up the 
long way to the top of the divide. When 
she reached the grade by the field where 
the game had been played, the recollec- 
tion of it filled her mind. 

“My Baby’s got to have learnin’,” she 
said, closing her lips determinedly. “I 
can’t give him nothin’ else that will mean 
so much. The ‘vus’ty’ is power. It’s 
better than money an’ land, ’cause it puts 
the force inside and under his own con- 
trol. These other things are outside , 
and maybe they’d control him. He can’t 
never have a father nor brother nor 
sister. But he’s got a mother’s love an’ 
he’s goin’ to get an eddication. An’ 
they’re blessin’s that ’ll shape his life. 
The Lord is good to let him have ’em.” 

Her heart thrilled with humble grat- 
itude, and, as if to reassure herself, and 
drive away the cold as well, she clapped 
her mittened hands together and cried 
out cheerily : 


40 




"Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K. U. !” 

Down on the main avenue the stores 
were gay with Christmas trappings, 
and tempting with toys and other de- 
lights. The show windows are always 
prettiest at the holiday season, but 
Cuddy could not stop to look at them, 
for time was precious, and the few 
pieces of silver in her purse must be 
used for debts that dogged her steps, 
or to fight back the wolf from her door. 

"I can’t even give him homemade 
candy,” she said sorrowfully. Sugar 
and molasses were in her list of lux- 
uries. “I wish I could find him a pic- 
ture somewhere. His heart is so set 
on it.” 

The big bookstore of Basel & Com- 
pany had never been more artistic in 
its holiday appointments. Crowded as 
it was, it had the atmosphere of a 
handsome library. 

At a low counter young Basel, son 
of the proprietor, was attending a 
richly dressed woman who was buying 
lavishly for a little girl beside her. 

"That will be all, will it, Mrs. An- 
cel?” he asked, turning to the next 
customer, against whom Mrs. Ancel 
stumbled as she started out. 

It was only a shabby countrywoman, 
who stared about her, and Mrs. Ancel, 
sweeping past, gave her a look of infinite 
scorn. 

"These country lubbers never look 


CuDDp’0 oeafip 


41 


where they are going when they get 
to town, Muriel," speaking to her little 
daughter. “They fill up a store so 
one can't shop. I wish they could 
be kept out of the city during the 
holidays." 

Cuddy Perine shrank as from a blow. 
This place was too pretty for her, who 
so loved pretty things. Not three times 
in twice as many years had she been 
inside of a bookstore. Her meager 
reading had come from other sources. 
She turned to go now as one who had no 
right there. 

“Can't I show you something?" It 
was young Basel's voice, courteously 
kind as it had been to the fine lady who 
had just passed out. 

“I don't know," said Cuddy hesita- 
tingly. 

The young man understood at a 
glance. He was the spirit of this well- 
appointed bookshop that made it the 
pride of the town. 

“Would you like to look about first?" 
She might have been the wife of a mil- 
lionaire from his tone. It put a sense of 
self-respect into the widow’s soul. How 
she would love to spend an hour there ! 
But the little boy alone in the cold 
house — she must hurry. 

“Have you any little cheap picture of 
the Kansas University?" she asked, 
fingering a precious silver dime in her 
coarse mitten. 


42 


CuODg’0 15a&p 


Basel wondered afterward what kept 
him from fainting. She might as well 
have asked for an illuminated version 
of Herodotus, and not have surprised 
him more. 

“My little boy wants one so bad,” she 
said, seeing him hesitate as he put his 
hand on a pile of Mother Goose books. 

“Yes, I think we must have. Come 
in here.” 

He led the way into an alcove where 
there were many pictures and stacks of 
illustrated pamphlets. Cuddy’s eyes 
glistened as she looked about her. 

“Here’s a little lithograph. It’s an 
advertisement of the University, but 
it’s all we have.” 

It was a small souvenir-card show- 
ing the best of the University buildings, 
with hardly a hint at the magnificent 
landscape that lies about them. The 
grass was very green and the sky was 
very blue, for advertisements were not 
then the works of art they have since 
become. 

“How much is it?” asked Cuddy. 

“Oh, take it along. They were sent 
here in some catalogs of the school. 
Here, let me fix it up for your little 
one.” He slipped it deftly into a small 
cheap frame made for holding photo- 
graphs. 

“Oh, thank you ; much obliged to you. 
My Baby will be so glad.” 

“I wanted to give her something else 


CuOOg’0 TSaftp 


43 


for her child, ” said Basel, speaking of it 
afterward. “But I didn’t dare, some- 
how. There was that about her, shabby 
as she was, that wouldn’t let me.” 

Cuddy tucked the precious picture 
safely away in her basket and started 
on her long homeward drive. The 
wind had gone down and a crisp frost- 
rimed world tinged with the clear pur- 
ple and scarlet of a December sunset lay 
in winter stillness about her. 

“It’s lots warmer when you’re 
happy,” she said to herself. “Maybe 
Kansas ain’t been very kind to me. But 
they’s troubles wherever they’s geog- 
raphy, I guess, an’ somehow they’s 
healin’ to the soul in such a place as 
this.” She breathed deeply of the 
bracing air, and her cheeks grew pink 
with its frosty caress. “I’d never want 
to live nowhere else now.. It’s conse- 
crated ground where your struggles is. 
Mine’s here, heaven knows, but they 
ain’t makin’ me bitter nor selfish. May- 
be it’s because I can see so far. Back 
East a man can’t even see all his own 
ground, let alone his neighbor’s, an’ 
he’s apt to get the notion everything he 
sees is his an’ part of what he don’t see. 
He forgets all about the earth bein’ the 
Lord’s an’ the fulness thereof.” 

Meanwhile, Baby Harold, left alone 
for the long hours of the afternoon, had 
tried every means he knew to kill time. 


44 




He had played stable with chair stalls 
and broomstick horses. He had had a 
Sabbath-school, and had gone visiting 
at Basher’s. And best of all, he. had 
worked out a football game, with the 
knives for one team and the forks for 
the other, and the spoons in the glass 
tumbler for the packed grand-stand. 
But he tired of even this, and he was 
getting lonely, cold and hungry. It was 
growing late, too, and the shadows were 
deepening in the corners of the room. 
He sat by the kitchen window and went 
through with all the songs he knew, and 
his voice was sweet and clear as he sang 
the hymns his mother had taught him. 
When he had finished the last line of 
“God be with You till We Meet Again,” 
his eyes were full of tears, and because 
he didn’t know what else to do he folded 
his chubby hands reverently and re- 
peated the Lord’s Prayer. 

His case was getting desperate, when 
he suddenly thought of Christmas eve. 

“I’ll get ready now,” he said, drag- 
ging his high chair toward the clock- 
shelf. Joe Perine had placed it low 
because his wife was short of stature. 
Harold could just open the clock by 
standing on tiptoe on his high chair. 
Down inside the case he fingered until 
he found the penny Basher had given 
him. He gripped it tightly. It meant 
a money-panic for him to give it up. 
It was the beginning of his fund for his 


CuDDp ’0 05abg 


45 


beloved “vus’ty.” But the love for 
his mother was stronger than any 
other feeling. Wrapping the penny 
awkwardly in a bit of paper, he tucked 
it under his pillow. 

“She’ll be so s’prised and glad, I ist 
know,” he said to himself ; and then, just 
as his loneliness was coming back, he 
caught the singing of the snow under the 
wagon wheels and heard his mother’s 
voice. 

“Wock Chalk, Jay Hawk,” he an- 
swered her call. 

After supper, Cuddy, with her little 
one on her knee, told over the story of 
the blessed Baby born so many cen- 
turies ago in a humble manger. The 
Baby who was to be the Light of 
the world. Then they sang together, 
“What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and 
Harold said his prayers. 

And then came the great act of the 
evening. Each in turn made pretense 
of going to sleep while the other slipped 
the Christmas gift into the father’s 
stocking hung close by the stove on 
the chimney. 

It was late before Harold could fall 
asleep. The heart of childhood is the 
same in cabin and palace, and there was 
no more happy, trustful child in all 
Kansas that Christmas eve than the 
little fatherless boy in the plain home 
under the tall leafless cottonwoods. 
The winter wind swept across the 


46 


CuDDp’0 IBabp 


prairies, making fuzzy little snow- 
flurries along its path. The moon- 
light fell in a shower of silvery splendor, 
on a diamond-decked landscape. No 
reindeers and sleigh cut the long white 
road to the far-away cottage that night, 
but the trees stretched their arms in 
loving protection above it, and their 
shadows fell caressingly on roof and 
wall. 

Cuddy sat late by the fire, mapping 
out her future step by step. 

“I wonder/’ she mused, “if that fine 
lady in the bookstore loves her little 
girl any more than I love my boy, even 
if she could spend dollars, and I was 
glad of the gift for nothin’. She was 
such a pretty child, too, an’ her name is 
Muriel. It’s a sweet name. Some day, 
when Baby is dressed like a gentleman, 
I’d like to see him along-side such a girl. 
I won’t think about her mother. I 
believe when my boy’s grown up he’d 
rather have me poor an’ kind than rich 
an’ rude.” 

Cuddy’s prayer that night was sweet 
and trustful. 

“Dear Father,” she prayed, “there’s 
only one way before me, but it’s Thy 
way. I don’t know much, an’ I can’t do 
much myself. If I bring up my blessed 
Baby to be a strong man, an’ to have 
schoolin’, so’s he can have a place in the 
world, an’ to do good with the power 
that’s his’n, take it, dear Lord, for my 


CttUOg’0 TBa&p 


47 


gift to Thee. I know even if it seems 
like we just can’t get through, that my 
hands is goin’ to be strengthened; an’ 
if I come to my burdens brave, they’ll 
be like wings; when I lift ’em, they’ll 
lift me. Give me hope an’ courage an’ 
love, so’s I won’t have bitterness an’ hate 
in my heart, an’ I’ll fight my battle the 
best I can, until, some day, I can ‘enter 
into Thy gates with thanksgivin,’ an’ 
into Thy courts with praise,’ an’ be with 
Joe again in Thy kingdom forevermore. 
Amen.” 

The world was magnificent that 
Christmas morning, done in ermine and 
mother-of-pearl, with a sunburst of 
radiance in the sky, and never a jagged 
line in all the soft, graceful curves of 
the snow-draped earth. Kansas had 
hardly known such a Canadian winter 
day among the milder holidays of its 
history. Long before Harold was 
awake his mother had made the kitchen 
warm and cosy. It was always clean, 
and this morning she would not stint 
the fuel. And since she was not only 
maid-of-all-work, but man-of-all-work 
as well, she had planned to have their 
celebration before she went to her cold 
task of milking, feeding and cutting the 
ice in the creek where the cattle might 
drink. There were only a few head 
saved out of that May flood, and they 
were very valuable now. 


48 


eutJDp’0 iSafip 


“What’s in our stockin’? I ist can’t 
wait !” cried Harold, tumbling pink 
and happy out of his morning sleep. 

“Why, here’s a picture, sure enough, 
and it’s the University, too,” said Cuddy. 

Harold’s cup was full. Years after- 
ward, Muriel Ancel, speaking of that 
day, said, “I had so many gifts heaped 
on me that year I had no joy in any of 
them.” 

“And I had so few,” Harold had re- 
plied, “that I had nothing but joy.” 

“It’s a real vus’ty. A great big house, 
an’ oh, pwetty grass an’ everything like 
I dreamed last night. Tell me all about 
it.” 

He turned the picture about as though 
all Mount Oread lay at the back of the 
frame. 

“Were you ever there, Cuddy?” 

But Cuddy had found a bunchy little 
bundle of paper. 

“Why, what can this be?” 

Baby’s eyes danced. 

“It’s my vus’ty penny, an’ it’s for you, 
Cuddy. It was all I had, an’ it’s ist for 
you.” 

How less than little it was, but the 
love that went with it meant millions. 
Cuddy understood both, the love and 
the sacrifice. 

“It’s to be the beginnin’ of a Christ- 
mas Vus’ty’ fund, an’ every Christmas, 
fat an’ lean years, I’ll add to it a little. 
An’ when you grow up it will help to 


CuDDg’0 15a tig 


49 


pay your way to the ‘vus’ty.’ So there’ll 
be something in Papa’s stockin’ for both 
of us.” 

“Will the vus’ty be yours, too, oh, 
Cuddy?” 

“Yes, in a way, it will.” 

There was a jingling of sleighbells 
just outside the window, and Jake 
Basher’s big kindly voice sang out, 
“Merry Christmas!” before Mrs. Pe- 
rine could open the door. 

“Ma sent me over to do your chores 
fur ye this mornin’, and to bring some 
things ol’ Santy lef’ las’ night by mis- 
take,” winking toward Harold. “Here’s 
a pun’kin, an’ some navy beans, an’ some 
cookies, outlandishest things you ever 
seen — got baked into shapes like men 
an’ horses an’ things. An’ some molas- 
ses candy, an’ a few nuts. An’ seein’ it’s 
so all-fired cold I jest hitched up to the 
bobsled. Ye see” — he hesitated — “a 
lot of drift-wood from the flood lodged 
down on the section below ye, an’ as it 
wasn’t rightly nobody’s, the neighbors 
gethered it up an’ cut it stove-lengths; 
an’ as no one of ’em could take it they 
piled it on my bobsled yesterday fur 
me to bring in this mornin’ to you. 
They’s wood there they know is your’n, 
fur they ain’t no other hick’ry trees on 
the creek except your farm here. They’s 
four er five more loads, cornin’ in this 
week.” 

And there through the window Cuddy 


50 


CuUOg’0 TBaby 


caught sight of a wagon-bed on runners, 
piled high with seasoned wood, neatly 
corded. 

“Why, when did you get it ready ?” 
asked the surprised woman. 

“The week after we was here in the 
fall an’ you said you wasn’t goin’ to 
leave the farm, an’ never put up no 
whine ’bout bein’ a poor widder nuttier,” 
replied the farmer. “I’m lookin’ fur 
an airly spring, an’ they’s wood to keep 
ye through.” 

Late that afternoon the mother and 
child sat together. In the latter’s hand 
was his cherished picture. 

“Tell me all ’bout it,” he said. 

“But I never was there.” 

“Well, tell me how you think it is,” 
he persisted. 

So Cuddy drew her own picture for 
him. 

“I think it’s up on a high hill like 
Basher’s, because them that planned it 
first would know the value of not bein’ 
crowded, and of havin’ an outlook. A 
school’s like a fort some ways — wants 
to overlook the country. An’ I think 
there are lots more nice buildings there, 
all full of nice young folks, and they 
have good times and work hard. An’ 
all around there’s flowers and trees, 
where the scholars can sit an’ study, 
or look off at the distance. It makes 
poets an’ painters as well as scholars 
to go to the University, an’ be where 


CuOOp’s TBafip 


51 


they can learn an' where there’s nothin’ 
to shut off the skyline all around. 

“I expect,” she went on, “that they 
can see miles of farms an’ orchards, 
and pastures, and maybe a river. The 
Kaw ain’t very far from there. I ’most 
know they can see that ; and then away 
off the soft purple where the earth and 
sky comes together. Think of watchin’ 
a sunrise up there, an’ of seein’ all the 
pretty lights of evenin’, an’ in the fall 
after frost comes it must be glorious.” 

“Will I see it all some day?” asked 
Baby; “and what can I do wiv the 
vus’ty?” 

“Baby, dear, you will see it. The 
University ain’t easy to understand 
now. But you’ll know when you get 
bigger. They’s power in books, that 
can make you do good in the world. 
You can be good anyhow, but you can’t 
do good, not much good, unless you 
have schoolin’. It begins over in the 
Deer Creek schoolhouse, but it don’t 
never end, not even when you get a 
diplomy from the University.” 

Baby only half understood her words, 
but in the wisdom of his child-heart he 
caught the beginnings of what Life, real 
Life, means. Not always to those of 
mature years and wide opportunities 
alone is it vouchsafed to know the best 
things. In the mind of this little coun- 
try boy the wisdom of the ages was 
finding lodgment. He never forgot that 


52 




Christmas day. Years afterward it 
seemed to him that he must have known 
intuitively then what he later went 
through many and various ways to 
justify. 

When he said his “Now I lay me” 
that night, a sense of something hith- 
erto unknown came upon him, and in 
the simplicity of his soul he added to 
his usual form: “Please make me a 
good boy, and — Dear Jesus, I’m goiri 
to do it.” 


IV 

CuDDp’0 Cfm' 0 tma$ 




IV 

CUDDY’S CHRISTMAS 

Those who toil bravely and strongly, 

The humble and poor, become great, 

And from these little brown-handed children 
Shall grow up mighty rulers of state. 

T HERE was a sameness about the 
years of the story that was writ- 
ing itself out in the tree-sheltered home 
in the Deer Creek valley. Hard work, 
merciless economy, little leisure, many 
failures, many bitter discouragements 
marked the days. It was only a com- 
mon-place life there, with no romance 
and no thrilling adventure; nothing to 
put into the poet’s song, nor the fiction- 
writer’s novel. Just a widow strug- 
gling to earn a livelihood, to keep down 
the gnawing debt that was eating at 
her land, to give her son what oppor- 
tunities her meager resources afforded, 
and in her own patient, persistent way 
to grow into a larger mental life. And 
just a country boy to whom the com- 
monest comforts were mostly luxuries 
— a boy — growing year by year toward 
a man’s stature, with muscles like iron, 
a sound digestion, and, for anything he 
knew, no nervous system at all. H!s 
was an isolated life, and full of duties, 
but his buoyant good-nature and his 
[ 55 ] 


56 


CuODg^ TBa&g 


innate eagerness for knowledge kept 
his spirit wholesome. Of necessity he 
learned how to sow and reap. He was 
wise in wood lore and prairie lore, and 
he gained skill in the use of such tools 
as he had. Of necessity he developed 
fearlessness and self-reliance. He fed 
horned cattle and handled vicious colts. 
He could swim like a fish, could climb 
to the highest places, and was sure- 
footed in the narrow ways. He never 
lost his bearings. From the top of the 
west ridge Cuddy would catch his clear 
ringing “Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk!” 
which was always his signal to her, as 
down the dark lane he came singing 
home. 

There were those who said Mrs. Fe- 
rine had spoiled her boy, although they 
could excuse her on the ground of 
“havin’ nothin’ else to spoil.” Yet they 
could but withdraw a little moral sup- 
port from her when she stinted herself 
so one winter to pay for singing-lessons. 
Especially when Harry Perine went 
twice a week clear to town — nine miles 
— to take lessons of a city teacher, when 
Jennie Basher could play the organ and 
lead the choir and teach poor folks’ chil- 
dren all the music they need to know. 
All Deer Creek neighborhood except 
Jake Basher declared “the Widder Pe- 
rine was a fool, but a good-hearted one.” 
Basher “didn’t know but he’d ’a’ done 
better to ’a’ let Jennie had some more 


CuDDg’s TBafig 


57 


advantages.” But the other neighbors 
set that down to Basher’s modesty about 
his own girl. 

But through all the shadow and shine 
of the seasons, the “vus’ty” notion of 
Baby Harold’s childhood, growing 
slowly into the definite university idea, 
was never lost. Each Christmas eve 
the same old stocking hung by the 
kitchen chimney, and the penny fund 
grew slowly. The seasons fluctuated. 
Sometimes the “vus’ty” stock was at a 
premium, and sometimes it was des- 
perately below par. But the fund was 
never used for any other purpose. It 
came to be the one feature of their holi- 
day celebration, each trying to surprise 
the other by the size of the increase con- 
tributed. They might have grown 
miserly over it had its purpose been less 
generous. But always Cuddy kept be- 
fore her boy the notion that education 
is a power for good or it is wasted 
energy. 

Naturally they became students to- 
gether, making use of every scrap of 
learning. It is wonderful how much 
the hungry mind can find to feed upon. 
One year an advertiser of liver pills 
issued a Shakespeare almanac with long 
quotations from Julius Caesar inter- 
spersed with glowing testimonials if 
restored liver-owners all the way frc>m 
Molunkus, Maine, to Tarpon, Texas. 
It was in this almanac that Harold Pe- 


58 


CuDDg’s ISaftp 


rine and his mother found their Shakes- 
peare. Something in Antony’s eulogy 
of Brutus fastened itself in the boy’s 
understanding. 

His life was gentle, and the elements 

So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up 

And say to all the world, “This was a man 1” 

The lines created an ideal for the boy 
that did not leave him. 

And so they passed their days until 
the real University life began, and 
Harold Perine climbed the steep slope 
to the top of Mount Oread and saw the 
picture his mother had tried to paint 
in words on that Christmas afternoon 
so long ago. 

The big, eager-hearted boy from the 
edge of the short-grass country brought 
to his new life a determined spirit, a 
sunny good-nature, and a manliness of 
character. But the order of the world 
seemed changed to him here. His first 
lesson was to discover that some students 
came with little intention of learning. It 
was a surprise to find how they squan- 
dered time and neglected opportunities. 
It was also a surprise to see how lavishly 
money could be spent by those who 
had never earned a dollar in their lives, 
and how much influence in University 
circles that money could bring. It was 
a /revelation to discover how much of 
dissipation may creep into a college boy’s 
life, unfitting him for the decent society 


CuOtip’0 13a6p 


59 


in which he daily mingled. And the 
greatest surprise of all, the one he did 
not even mention in his letters to Cuddy, 
was that there could be such a beautiful 
girl outside of pictures as Muriel Ancel, 
whom he met on the day he entered 
school. 

But he had grown up with one pur- 
pose, and he had lived too near to the 
heart of Nature, and the sweetness that 
comes up from the prairie sod of Kan- 
sas, and the inspiration that comes 
down from her splendid skies, were too 
much a part of his being, disciplined 
by years of endeavor, for him to lose 
his balance in the first bewildering 
whirl of his strange new life. 

He knew at once that a battle was 
before him, the battle every poor boy 
must fight who attains to the mastery 
in the world of men. It was not a win- 
ning fight always, and only the remem- 
brance of the patient mother at home, 
whose life, was his life, kept him some- 
times from utter defeat. It is wonder- 
ful what Love can do. And how a plain 
little countrywoman, who had never 
been inside a college door, whose hands 
were unshapely from the tasks men per- 
form, a woman of whom in the social 
sense one could not be proud — how 
this little mother, the Cuddy-Mamma 
of Harold Perine’s babyhood — the com- 
panion of his childhood, was the inspira- 
tion of his manhood. 


60 


CuOOg’S ISabp 


He filled his letters with all the Uni- 
versity life he was living, until she came 
to know people and places and condi- 
tions almost as accurately as if she were 
a student herself. They had been happy 
companions at home. They were col- 
lege chums now, and a new world 
opened for her — albeit it was only 
painted on note-paper with an indelible 
pencil. 

“Oh, Cuddy,” Harold wrote early 
in the first year, “it is tremendous just 
to be here, and to know the boys, and 
the girls. There’s a girl here named 
Muriel, who is the prettiest girl in the 
world, I believe — except Cuddy, who 
is more than beautiful to me; and there 
are men whose very presence in the 
classroom puts self-respect inside a fel- 
low, and make him take hold of things. 
You remember that poem we pasted on 
the clock-face, 'Each in His Own 
Tongue/ and how we loved the stanza: 


A haze on the far horizon, — 

The infinite, tender sky, — 

The ripe rich tint of the corn-fields, 

And the wild geese sailing high, — 

An(t all over upland and lowland 
The charm of the golden-rod — 

Some of us call it Autumn, 

And others call it God. 

The man who wrote that is a professor 
here, and I know him personally. I 
never knew what hero-worship meant 
until I met him. Of course I know all 



62 


CuOOp’0 IBabp 


about saint-worship. Learned that 
down on Deer Creek, where Saint 
Cuddy has a shrine. ,, 

So ran his letters in happy vein, care- 
fully hiding the struggle-and-sacrifice 
side of things. 

“She’s had enough of that, heaven 
knows,” he thought. 

And his mother, with an unutterable 
loneliness added to her other cares, 
wrote only of the best things, hinting 
not at all of the conditions she had now 
to meet. His absence meant more than 
loneliness. His place must be filled, and 
Cuddy became her own hired help to 
save the money for his needs. One thing 
she had enforced upon him, and her let- 
ters repeated it: “You have only four 
years for the ‘vus’ty’ you have kept since 
childhood, Baby, and you must not put 
in all the time in study in school and 
hard work out of school. You may 
get through quicker, maybe, to crowd 
four years into three, but you are tak- 
ing out of yourself what you put into 
your lessons. There’s nothing, not 
even glory, in starving and slaving 
and studying. Get all you can out of 
books first, but don’t forget to learn 
how to fall in with folks so you can 
take your place, not as a broken-down 
book-eater, but an all-round man. I’m 
too busy to nurse invalids, and you must 
keep strong, and if you graduate you 
don’t want to be too awkward to know 


Cud Dp’s lSabg 


63 


how to meet even the Governor of Kan- 
sas if you was introduced to him.” 

She added to this letter: “I never 
knew but one girl named Muriel, and 
that was when you was a baby. She 
was beautiful. It must be the name.” 

It is hard to tell which had the busier 
life, and it is useless to enter into the 
stress of it. Harold Perine came to his 
own at last, on the strength of in- 
trinsic merit. There was no more popu- 
lar fellow in the University than he. 
Even among the ultra-exclusive and the 
frivolous sets he was admired, while to 
every young student coming over the 
way he had come he was a tower of 
strength. He was the idol of the ath- 
letic field. The same spirit that years 
before had led him to cry out, “Wot 
Chot! Jay Haut! Ta O-o!” and so 
lead the University to conquest, had 
more than once brought victory to his 
comrades and honor to himself. His 
pride in the heavy course he was master- 
ing, and his upright character, combined 
all with his own hopeful spirit, could 
but keep him in the very fore-front of 
the University life. 

And naturally enough this was not 
Cuddy's life. It could not be, try as she 
would, for her own work must be done, 
and she knew she was filling her own 
place. So she did not grieve. She re- 
joiced, rather, sure of an unfailing love 
from her Baby. He never was anything 


64 


CuDtJg’0 15abg 


else to her. Every vacation found him 
at home, falling easily into his place and 
lifting from his mother’s shoulders all 
the burdens that he could. Every 
Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday 
his welcome call, “Rock Chalk! Jay 
Hawk!” would sound far down the val- 
ley from the top of the west ridge, to let 
his mother know that he was coming. 
They had no other signal that meant so 
much. Every Christmas-time the old 
stocking was hung in its place, and the 
big “Varsity athlete” put his best into it 
as years before he had concealed his 
blessed “vus’ty” penny. 

One other thing had happened, the 
thing that has had a way of happening 
since the world was young. A new 
joy, that was unlike any other joy he 
had ever known ; a happiness that 
made Mount Oread a delectable moun- 
tain glorified for him, had come to fill 
his days. Muriel Ancel, dark-eyed, 
pink-cheeked, sweet-voiced, with the 
gentleness of a child, and a spirit of 
exceeding kindness, had for three years 
been so much more than all else the 
spirit of the University for him. He 
had not told her so. He didn’t know 
it himself for a long time, and when he 
did “find himself” the realization was 
more like pain than any sorrow he had 
ever known. There seemed to be a 
gulf ready to yawn between them as 
soon as Commencement should rob them 




65 


of more college days together, because 
their lives would be so widely divergent 
afterward. 

When Harold met Mrs. Ancel he felt 
this more than ever, as he thought of 
Cuddy. “But I’d rather have my Cuddy 
poor and kind, than rich and rude,” he 
had said to himself just as his mother 
had believed he would after the meeting 
in the bookstore in that earlier time. 
But Muriel was not like her mother, and 
Harold’s heart was unchanged. 

It came about that at the approach 
of the fourth Christmas of his school 
years a large house-party was planned 
in the Ancel home. A round of dinners 
and dances and rollicking good times 
was mapped out. Most of the guests 
were from Muriel’s University set; and 
if anybody knows how to rig and launch 
a good time, a group of college boys and 
girls of many months’ association 
together can do it. Music was to be a 
feature of every event. Muriel’s touch 
on the piano was exquisite, and Harold’s 
solos were to delight every company. His 
voice was now the fullness of that of 
which Joe Perine’s voice was the prom- 
ise. It had been his “open sesame” to 
the best musical circles. It took Harold 
a long time to write of all this to his 
mother, but when a man is in love there’s 
only one face in the world for him. 

His senior year was trebly expensive, 
of course, and the savings that would 


66 


CuODg’0 35ai>p 


have almost sufficed for any other entire 
year were nearly exhausted by Christ- 
mas. Cuddy knew this, and she was 
planning how best to meet it. The 
mortgage was lifted now, and only 
half a year more of hard work and sav- 
ing lay between her and her boy’s Com- 
mencement, and then he would come 
home to her again, and take up the lines 
she might lay down. 

The autumn had been full of discour- 
agements when she most needed money, 
and her own strength was waning in a 
troublesome way. One dry fall day, 
just before Thanksgiving, a disastrous 
prairie-fire had swept over the west 
ridge and licked up every stack of 
her precious alfalfa; and a little later 
cholera broke out among the hogs. It 
seemed to Cuddy that money went to 
pieces before her eyes. 

Added to this was an unusual lone- 
liness and longing for her Baby’s home- 
coming. She could hardly wait for the 
days to go by and Christmas eve to 
come. 

Two days before Christmas, Jake 
Basher brought over the mail. 

“Letter from your boy. Know’d ye’d 
want it. Reckon he’ll be home tomor- 
row. It’s turnin’ cold. Looks like a 
blizzard getherin’ up in the northwest, 
sweepin’ in clear from Manitoby. Good- 
day, Mis’ Perine, an’ a Merry Christ- 
mas to ye.” And he was off. 


67 


The letter was brief. It ran: 

“Dear Cuddy: — I’ve never been 
away from you at Christmas-time be- 
fore, and I don't want to be now, but 
I’m invited to a house-party with a 
lot of our set, and I do want to go. 
You’ll say ‘yes,’ Cuddy sweetheart, 
because you love your good-for-noth- 
ing Baby. I feel like Judas Iscariot to 
do it, but, Cuddy, I’ve got a girl who 
wants me to go — just like you must 
have asked my father years ago when 
you were pretty little Janet Meade, 
and Joe Perine was a young man like 
me. I’ve never been to her home yet, 
— just know her at school. 

“You are the dearest Cuddy in the 
world, and I’ll be home soon and tell 
you so. Your loving 

‘Baby.’” 

Cuddy sat long by the window with 
eyes that saw nothing. Her heart was 
sore. Her spirit bowed with the weight 
of disappointment. Never in all his 
twenty-two years had she risen on 
Christmas morning without her Baby 
to greet her. For seventeen years the 
same stocking hung on the chimney had 
served them both. 

The day had been the one of the whole 
year when the peace of the angels’ mes- 
sage to the shepherds out beyond Bethle- 
hem had come into their hearts and 
made them rich in all good things. 

“It’s not because he’s in love,” Cuddy 
murmured half aloud. “I’d be a selfish 


68 




mother to deny him the best thing in the 
world, though he don’t even tell me her 
name nor where she lives ; it’s for him to 
be away at Christmas-time, when I’m 
so lonely, an’ I need his advice about 
how to make up for the hogs and the 
alfalfa. But he don’t know about that 
yet. I forgot that. Oh, dear, I just 
want him because I want him.” She 
bowed her head on the kitchen table and 
the great hot tears fell upon it. 

At last she stiffened bravely. 

“You, poor, selfish old Cuddy, not to 
let your Baby, weighin’ a hundred an’ 
ninety pounds now, get away just one 
Christmas day. An’ all them magazines 
he sent me to read, and so much to be 
done — I just can’t get lonesome. An’ 
I reckon if I do I can "take it to the 
Lord in prayer’ as I’ve done these many 
years, an’ never been denied. He don’t 

go ’way to spend Christmas 

My ! but it’s gittin’ cold. Basher’s right 
about the blizzard.” 

The northwest was one gray-black 
frown, and a bitter air was penetrating 
every crevice with its sharp breath, 
although it was twenty-four hours be- 
fore the blizzard in all its fury fell upon 
the Deer Creek valley. 

Late in the next afternoon, Cuddy, 
who in spite of her efforts went per- 
functorily about her tasks, had pre- 
pared her kitchen for the night. It 
was a foolish thing, she knew, but she 


CudOp’0 OBabp 


69 


could not resist the impulse to get out 
the old stocking and hang it as she had 
always done by the stove. 

“He won’t call ‘Rock Chalk’ to me 
this Christmas vacation, but I must do 
something for old times’ sake,” she 
said. “I’ve just had to imagine good 
things most of my life : I can do it a lit- 
tle more, I reckon.” 

The cold increased, and a blizzard 
from the northwest filled the air with 
its myriads of ice-needles. A whirl of 
blinding snow swept over the land so 
fiercely that all unprotected life in its 
pathway must perish before its wrath. 
It rattled at the widow’s doors, and 
howled fiendishly about her roof. 

And then she remembered what her 
disappointment and dulled senses had 
driven out of mind, namely, that the 
cattle must be gotten under shelter 
somehow. Without them the University 
year could not be completed. It was 
upon her to save them at any cost. 

She hastily wrapped herself in cloak 
and hood, turning at the door to take 
one look at her warm, clean kitchen. 
It was such a cozy place at that mo- 
ment! The stocking hung limp in its 
annual place of honor. Her chair by 
the window was inviting to a quiet rest. 
Harold’s picture in football array 
leaned against the old clock on the 
shelf whence the “vus’ty penny” once 
came forth to fill a Santa Claus mission. 


70 


CuDDp’0 


Should she let the cattle go and stay in 
this warm place? Then Joe Perine’s 
face in its brave sweetness came back 
to her. So he had stood when the wrath 
of the Lord came down in the waters, 
and so he had gone out to do for her. 
She turned toward the cold outside. 

“The draw’s fillin’ with snow now,” 
she said, “an’ it’s gettin’ dark; but I 
must save the cattle for my own that’s 
left.” And out into the storm’s be- 
wildering mazes she plunged, to do for 
one she loved. 

No cold had ever chilled her so, as 
back and forth she struggled through the 
drifts. The stupid cattle were huddled 
in a sheltered corner in the far side of 
the pasture, and the snow was deepen- 
ing about them. With frantic effort 
their rescuer tried to drive them toward 
the barn, wherein she meant to herd 
them until the storm was over. They 
broke away and ran back, they charged 
this way and that, wearing out the 
strength of their poor driver striving 
to save them. 

At last they were safely gathered in 
and the door fastened, and Cuddy, numb 
with cold, started for the house. The 
snow blinded the way and all sense of 
direction was lost. Up the fatal draw 
she floundered, wondering why she 
could not find the gate. A drowsiness 
was creeping over her and she sud- 
denly realized that she, too, was lost 


CuDDp’0 TSa bp 


71 


in sight of her own home, just as 
her husband had been in the May flood 
eighteen years before. She roused her- 
self for one more effort, but the snows 
of the draw only let her sink farther 
into their icy depths, and in that min- 
ute she lived again her whole life, mo- 
ment by moment, up to this last supreme 
moment for which she waited. 

The Ancel home was fairly aglow 
with Christmas wreaths, and beautiful 
in its luxurious furnishings, and gay 
with a host of jolly young folks just 
out of school, turned loose for a holiday 
vacation. It was high noon, and the 
train, a little behind-time, as trains will 
be at this season, had brought its last 
load of guests to this hospitable house- 
hold. 

At the doorway Muriel Ancel had 
just met the last comer, a handsome, tall 
young man, who did not enter. 

“But, Harold, you promised me you'd 
stay with us," Muriel was saying, and 
there was no mistaking the disappoint- 
ment in her tone. Nor was there any 
mistake about the expression in the dark 
blue eyes of the young man. 

“Muriel," he said gently, “I was 
selfish when I promised. I wanted to 
come; so much I wanted to;" Muriel's 
eyes fell before his glance, “but I want 
more" — his hand closed gently over 
hers for a moment — “I want more to 


72 


CuO Dp’s 15a&g 


go home. There’s a storm in the air ; I 
can’t tell you why, but I must go home.” 

The next moment he was gone. But 
the look as he turned away stayed with 
Muriel Ancel, just as his father’s face 
had been a blessed memory to the wife 
he loved. 

Harold plunged off on his nine-miles 
walk as one whose feet had wings. He 
would not think of the beautiful home 
and the gay company of which he had 
had but a glimpse, a great impulse urged 
him on. 

‘Tm mighty glad,” he said to him- 
self, “that the wind is at my back. And 
I’m mighty glad I learned how to run 
on the football field, and how to walk 
mile after mile.” 

He beat his chest with his gloved 
hands and laughed aloud at the storm 
in the very vigor of youth and strength. 
But he had need for these. The storm 
increased and the cold grew with it. 

“I never was lost in my life, just re- 
member that, Old Mr. Blizzard,” he 
cried gaily, trudging on his way. 

But with all and all it was the longest 
nine miles he had ever tried to cover, and 
it was dark when he reached the west 
ridge — so dark he could have doubted 
had he not had the assurance of youth 
to carry him through. With every mile 
the Ancel home had faded from his 
desire, and the Perine home had grown 
until his very eagerness carried him on. 



Arid then the 
5trond arms oF her 
Messed Baby 
o'aihered her in * * * » * * 






















V 

CHRISTMAS BELLS 


I T WAS on a clear sweet Christmas 
afternoon that Harold Perine and 
Muriel Ancel were married in the quiet 
city church through whose stained win- 
dows a softened radiance of sunlight fell. 
The invited guests were all close personal 
friends, and every appointment of that 
wedding service was ideal. As the 
bride and groom entered the carriage 
to start on their nine-miles ride to the 
country home, the stone steps of the 
church suddenly filled with a crowd of 
old schoolmates from the University. 

“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K. U.!” 
they shouted in chorus again and again, 
until far down the street their voices 
died away and the two happy ones could 
hear them no more. 

In the handsome new house on the 
west ridge Cuddy Perine waited once 
more her Baby’s home-coming. It was 
the happiest hour of her life. 

“My boy has come into his own king- 
dom at last,” she said. “The ‘vus’ty’ 
he couldn’t understand at first has 
brought him to be a man among men, 
and the whole State is proud of him. 

1 77 ] 


78 


CtlDDp’0 oeafig 


He’ll do better by his own children than 
I could do for him, but he couldn’t have 
done it without me to help him to it. And 
the school did all the rest. It’s more 
than money and land. Knowledge and 
judgment and a right conscience — 
that makes up real education. And now 
he’s cornin’ home with the girl he’s loved 
all these years. Seems like them that 
trusts in the Lord ain’t goin’ to want 
any good thing that He knows is good 
for ’em to have.” 

The carriage halted at the end of the 
long avenue leading up to the house, 
and once again the old college yell, first 
heard at the game so long ago, sounded 
across the prairie, a signal from Cuddy’s 
Baby: 

“Rock Chalk! Jay Hawk! K. U.!” 






































































































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\\ ^Indall over 

upland and lowland 
lhe charm of' 
t&fhe golden- rod ~ 
Some or us call il>-§t 
'Sa.rrututnn, 


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